How Much You Truly Meant To Me
by Dorien Cousland
Summary: Isadora reflects on her time spent with the Baudelaires while she and Duncan are stuck aboard the self-sustaining hot air mobile home. One-shot. Hints of Isadora/Violet.


I was never one to know exactly what I want.

My brother Duncan says it's because I'm always living in the whimsical world of poetry and am far too busy to come down to the real world.

He's partially right. I do live in a world of poetry.

But I don't think my sense of reality is skewed because of it… in some ways I feel I'm more conscious of reality than he is.

Duncan likes journalism. He likes facts and things that really happen, which is good and fine except that all he understands is the actual events.

He doesn't learn about the emotions and the actual people, and he gets so involved he becomes isolated from certain things.

But Duncan usually knows what he wants. From life in general I mean. He wants to become a journalist, certainly. That, and he wants to find the Baudelaires.

Now that's the one thing that's been clear in my life… our friends Violet, Klaus, and Sunny. The day they joined Prufrock Preparatory was the day when I like to think my life gained meaning, and actually had a purpose however often that changes. At the moment my purpose is getting out of this sustainable hot air balloon and finding them.

But that's easier said than done. It's been about a month now since we left the city of V.F.D. and left our friends with it. But it feels like a whole different lifetime has gone by.

I'm sure Duncan feels as upset as I do. It's like we're floating in limbo, waiting for our purpose to be fulfilled or changed once again.

It's awful being up here. It really is. How often I regret climbing up this ladder and abandoning Violet, Klaus, and Sunny.

Duncan and I have grown distant in these past weeks. I would like to think it's due to our present situation, but I'm sure it's because of a certain conversation I had with him the day after we flew off with Hector.

'Duncan,' I said, 'I have something to tell you.'

And of course he was completely serious, waiting to see what I had to say, because he had always been so supportive and he was the best brother I could have hoped for.

And so I told him what I had been meaning to say since the day that the Baudelaires walked into the cafeteria at Prufrock. He was naturally surprised, of course.

He was also hurt, because I had waited so long to tell him.

Even though Duncan must understand why I put it off for so long, at least I hope he does. I think Duncan must assume he was the first person I told, although I hadn't mentioned whether he was or not.

We haven't talked much since. I know he is missing his friends terribly, and he is probably missing Violet especially.

It was obvious to me that Duncan and Violet liked one other. Just the way they talked and looked at each other gave it away.

Yes, there had certainly been something between them at school. Their time together was cut too short for them to really realize the feelings they had for each other, however. And of course the moments we have spent together since school have been too rushed and dangerous for anyone to even think about things like that.

But the time spent at school was bliss. We were all lost souls, running from the past. And we all had found each other.

My stomach started churning that day and hasn't stopped since. I'm told that's one of the things that happen to people when they fall in love, and well, I'm not exactly sure about that.

I don't know if I was in love that day. I have read too many cliché poems about love at first sight to truly believe in it. But I know I was fascinated and amazed by the intensity of the feelings that had begun so suddenly.

I don't know if anyone noticed my furtive glances, or the slight blush my cheeks got whenever my love intrest looked my way. I always thought it was blatantly obvious.

Of course with Violet and Duncan interested in each other, that left people to naturally assume that there was something going on between Klaus and I. I think… I think he probably considered it himself for a short while. Considered being with me I mean. But it could never have worked, and he knew that.

Klaus and I bonded instantly, but on a strictly friendly level. I have always connected with boys more than girls as far as friendship goes.

Klaus was so supportive and helpful, and he was such a good friend. The best I could have asked for.

I told him everything. Which is why he gave up on liking me pretty quickly. Klaus understood that I just didn't feel that way about him.

I'm not a jealous person. I never got upset with Duncan during that time. I was just a bit dismayed perhaps.

Well, that is actually an amazing understatement.

Those days were bliss and torture all wrapped up in one.

I think a lot about which was more prominent, and the happiness definitely was. The great thing about those days was just being able to feel like a real person again. Me and Duncan's life had been in chaos ever since our parents died. And even then, when we finally came to school, we had to live in an awful shack away from all of the other kids.

But then the Baudelaires came and it was like Duncan and I finally had normal lives. We actually had friends our age, besides each other of course. We had friends that cared about us and laughed with us and promised to be together forever with us.

I hear all the time about how people always meet their first love in school. I always had felt a little left out of it because until the Baudelaires came along, Duncan and I were virtually alone. And so I had never really had feelings for anyone until then.

It was both wonderful and terrible.

I never understood why poets wrote about the heartbreak of seeing the person you love with someone else because I could not imagine why it would be so awful. I understand now.

But as I said before, even with all this happiness was more prominent during that time.

So I decided that my time spent at school was the best time of my life. And I'm sure it would be the same for Duncan. I wish I could go back in time and relive it over and over.

But that could never happen, and unfortunately now I'm stuck in this hot air balloon for who knows how long. Although I hate to think of the possibility, there is a chance that Duncan and I will never see our friends again. That idea becomes more and more real to me every time I look out at the endless expanse of land in front of us. They really could be anywhere.

There is also the fact that this air balloon was not meant to land, but to stay in the air. We probably never will return, because there is enough food and water up here to keep us alive for many years and years.

Sometimes it makes me cry thinking about how we are doomed to be stuck in this balloon forever. Mostly because I know that if we stay up here, I won't be able to ever see my friends again. And neither will Duncan.

One night, I was feeling especially hopeless and decided to write each of our friends a set of couplets for them to remember me by, and I dropped them off of the side of the hot air balloon. I had a desperate and impossible notion that perhaps the Baudelaires would find the poems somehow, and know that they were from me.

This one I wrote for Sunny:

_Even if our time was cut short,_

_You were always there to be my support._

_Never give up, don't be afraid,_

_And in the face of danger remember to be brave._

And for Klaus:

_You accepted me for who I was,_

_And reminded me that love is never a lost cause._

_I hope you know how much it meant,_

_Because I never got to tell you before we went._

And finally for Violet:

_To you so much needs to be said,_

_But like always it has to be cut short instead._

_I just hope you were able to see,_

_How much you truly meant to me._

At least that was the one I dropped off of the balloon with the others. I actually have a lot of different couplets I've written for her.

Sometimes I read a few of the poems before I go to bed. And sometimes I drop them over the side of the balloon because I figure the more couplets I drop the higher the chance is of Violet finding them.

But sometimes I just look out at the darkened world and wonder where the Baudelaires are, and if I could actually be closer to them than it feels like I am. I wonder about whether they got away from Count Olaf, although I have a feeling they did. I wonder if misfortune still plagues them and if unhappiness still strikes them at every turn they take.

And when I lay down and start to drift off to sleep, I think about whether they wonder about Duncan and I.

And if they miss us as much as I miss them.


End file.
